Feudal baron

Historically, feudal barons were the king's tenants-in-chief, that is to say men who held land by feudal tenure directly from the king as their sole overlord and were granted by him a legal jurisdiction (court baron) over their territory, the barony, comprising several manors. Such men, if not already noblemen, were ennobled by obtaining such tenure, and had thenceforth an obligation, upon summons by writ, to attend the king's peripatetic court, the earliest form of Parliament and the House of Lords. They thus formed the baronage, which later formed a large part of the peerage of England.

England

English feudal baronies (and all lesser forms of feudal tenure) were abolished by the Tenures Abolition Act 1660, but long before then the royal summons to attend parliament had been withheld from all but the most powerful feudal barons and had been extended to persons with lesser feudal tenures who had personal qualities fitting them to be royal councillors and thus peers. These latter were barons by writ.

Barons in Scotland

In Scotland, a Baron is the head of a "feudal" barony (also known as prescriptive barony). This used to be attached to a particular piece of land on which was the "caput" (Latin meaning 'head'), or the essence of the barony, normally a building, such as a castle or manor house. Accordingly, the owner of the piece of land containing the "caput" was the Baron or Baroness.

The Court of the Lord Lyon issued a new ruling April 2015 that recognises a person possessing the dignity of baron and other feudal titles (Lordship/Earl/Marquis). Lord Lyon now prefers the approach of recognizing the particular feudal noble dignity as expressed in the Crown Charter that the petitioner presents. These titles are recognised as the status of a minor baron but not a peer. Scottish feudal baronies may be passed to any person, of either sex, by inheritance or conveyance.
Scotland has a distinct legal system within the United Kingdom. Historically, in the Kingdom of Scotland, the Lord Lyon King of Arms, as the Sovereign’s Minister in matters armorial, is at once Herald and Judge.

In modern use, "Scottish people" or "Scots" is used to refer to anyone whose linguistic, cultural, family ancestral or genetic origins are from within Scotland. The Latin word Scotti originally referred to the Gaels but came to describe all inhabitants of Scotland. Though sometimes considered archaic or pejorative, the term Scotch has also been used for the Scottish people, though this usage is current primarily outside Scotland.

There are people of Scottish descent in many countries other than Scotland. Emigration, influenced by factors such as the Highland and Lowland Clearances, Scottish participation in the British Empire, and latterly industrial decline and unemployment, resulted in Scottish people being found throughout the world. Large populations of Scottish people settled the new-world lands of North and South America, Australia and New Zealand. There is a Scottish presence at a particularly high level in Canada, which has the highest level per-capita of Scots descendants in the world and second largest population of descended Scots ancestry after the United States. They took with them their Scottish languages and culture.